


Open Up To Me

by byrdistheword91



Category: Wynonna Earp (TV)
Genre: F/F, Fluff, Instrospection, mention of child neglect, overly detailed explanation of handywork
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-15
Updated: 2020-05-15
Packaged: 2021-03-03 00:47:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,807
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24206131
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/byrdistheword91/pseuds/byrdistheword91
Summary: It was so stereotypically lesbian, and Wynonna would no doubt tease her for the rest of her life when she learned about it, but Nicole Haught was quite the handyman around the house.
Relationships: Waverly Earp/Nicole Haught
Comments: 23
Kudos: 281





	Open Up To Me

** Open Up To Me **

“SHITBALLS!”  
  
Nicole jerked awake and flung herself from the bed, her instincts finely honed after more than a few near-death experiences in the clusterfuck known as Purgatory. Her abs tightened as she coiled herself into a low-crouch, one hand reaching toward the small gun safe where she kept her service weapon while staying at the Homestead. Her eyes scanned the room for any sign of Revenant, demon, witch, or rabid Easter bunny before coming to rest on the concerned face of her girlfriend Waverly, who’s thumb was crammed into her mouth.  
  
“Ummm…what are you doing?” Waverly asked, her thumb slipping free as she spoke.

  
“I, uh…heard you yell.” Nicole grimaced as she rose out of her crouch, her knees protesting as she straightened to her full height. Yep, rolling at top-speed on carpet equals rug burn on the knees. And she wasn’t even gonna get to say that she got rug burns the “fun” way.

“Oh, the stupid window fell on my thumb.” Waverly went back to sucking on the appendage, discussion of her misadventure apparently having reminded her of the ache. “I can never get it to stay up without a stick or something, and I guess I didn’t wedge it in there hard enough.”

Waverly dropped her sore hand in a huff as Nicole crossed the bedroom, her large hands carefully enveloping the smaller one and lifting it for a better look. There was a deep indent in the skin of Waverly’s thumb from where the corner of the window had hit it, but she didn’t show too much discomfort when prompted to wiggle it, so it likely wasn’t broken.  
  
Nicole gave it a gentle kiss anyway.

“Has this window always been like that?” Nicole inquired as she began to inspect the window more closely.  
  
“Yeah.” Waverly responded. “Sometimes Daddy’d be sober enough to say he’d fix it, but…he never really fixed anything around here.”  
  
Nicole turned to see the tell-tale signs of Waverly drifting away into her memories. Her shoulders slumped. Her eyes unfocused and downcast. The hunch slowly creeping up her spine as she tried to make herself smaller…  
  
“Hey,” Nicole stepped in front of her, taking both her hands in one and resting her free hand on Waverly’s cheek to gently tilt her face upwards until their eyes met. “Hey, come back to me, baby. You’re not there anymore, you’re here with me.”  
  
Nicole ducked to touch her forehead to the smaller woman’s and spoke softly, gently coaxing until Waverly blinked a few times, seeming to come back to herself.  
  
“Sorry…” Waverly trailed off, a blush creeping across her cheeks.  
  
“Shhh, no sorries.” Nicole took her face in both hands and kissed her forehead, her nose, and her lips. “You have nothing to be sorry for.”

Nicole knew that staying on the Homestead kept the Earp girls safe from the Revenants that wanted them dead, but she hated the effect that the house had on her girlfriend. Wynonna’s scars came from a childhood of being called crazy and bouncing from home to home to facility to detention center, but Waverly’s scars came from the memories in their childhood home. The reminders that lurked behind every door, that were baked into the old furniture, that roamed the halls at night as the old house creaked and settled. Memories that occasionally slapped Waverly in the face and brought her back to that neglected little girl, so desperate for affection from a father who only ever seemed to care about the “family legacy” and nothing else. And though Waverly strived to keep a positive outlook, to keep everyone’s spirits up, Nicole knew that the pain came at unexpected times, when a lingering familiar smell wafted from some forgotten corner of the room, or a sudden noise would startle her into a bad memory.

Waverly could hide those moments of sudden remembrance from everyone else, but she never seemed to be able to hide them from Nicole. She never really knew if the deputy’s keen observational skills came from her police training, the connection they shared, or some combination of the two. Whatever it was, a part of her was always grateful for the gentle woman’s calming presence when those moments struck. Every time she started to tumble over that edge into the darkness, Nicole was always there to pull her back.  
  
Waverly rested her head on Nicole’s chest and wrapped her arms loosely around her hips, closing her eyes and letting Nicole’s strong, steady heartbeat soothe her.  
  
Nicole rested her chin on her tiny girlfriend’s head, and fixed the window with a thoughtful stare.

* * *

“Mrrrreow?”  
  
“CJ, not right now, baby.” Nicole huffed a bit as she tried to push the small tiger of a cat aside and out of the cramped closet that she was currently kneeling in.  
  
“Mrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrreow.” Came the undeterred reply as CJ bonked the top of her head against Nicole’s shoulder and lowered herself closer to the ground to make herself harder to move. Nicole sighed in defeat.  
  
“Okay, okay, come here.”  
  
It took a bit of maneuvering, but eventually Nicole managed to situate herself with her back to the wall of the closet, her long legs crossed tight against her body and Calamity Jane curled in her lap, purring in victory as she tilted and turned her chin to direct her owner’s scratching fingers. Nicole rested her head against the wall behind her and allowed her eyes to roam over the various shelves and boxes that she’d crammed into her living room closet. She’d kept warning herself that there’d come a day when she’d regret not taking the time to unpack everything and either store it properly or get rid of it.  
  
It looked like that day had finally come.  
  
“I don’t suppose you know where I put my toolkits?” Nicole glanced down at the orange tabby with a hopeful look.

Her only answer was a look that clearly said, “Why have you stopped petting me?”

* * *

Eventually, Nicole found what she needed and after a quick sat Purgatory’s only hardware store, she hurried to the Homestead, unlocking it with the key Waverly gave her and lugging her toolbox up the stairs to Waverly’s bedroom. After one more trip to grab a pair of sawbucks out of her pickup, she strapped on her well-worn toolbelt and started inspecting the window, raising it and testing it as her eyes scanned the frame to diagnose the problem. Waverly and Wynonna were out on Rev-hunting duty, and Nicole was off today, which left her all day to get this window fixed.

“A-ha…” Nicole muttered as she spotted the broken cord peeking out from the right side of the lower sash. “I think I’ve found the problem.”  
  
Like Waverly had said a few days ago, the window refused to stay open on its own. Now that she knew the cord was broken, Nicole could diagnose the problem. Sash windows operated by cords and weights running through pulleys in the window frames. If the cord was cut, then the weights couldn’t hold up the window properly, which led to sticks wedged into the frame to hold the window open. Which led to smashed fingers like the bandaged one that Waverly was still sporting days later.

“Been a while since I last did this,” Nicole noted as she set up her sawbucks, “but it shouldn’t be too hard to remember.”

Grabbing her hammer and her 5-in-1 tool from her belt, Nicole knelt by the window and looked for the two vertical strips of wood on each side of the window frame that kept the lower sash from falling into the room. Carefully slipping the narrowed edge of the tool between the beam and the molding, Nicole started gently tapping at it with her hammer to pry the wood away from the frame.

It was so stereotypically lesbian, and Wynonna would no doubt tease her for the rest of her life when she learned about it, but Nicole Haught was quite the handyman around the house. What had started as a weekend job to make money for school had developed into a rather useful skill that had certainly worked to her advantage over the years. Chicks dig a woman in a toolbelt, Nicole had come to find out during college. Bonus points if you can fix a water heater on a Saturday morning when the landlord isn’t picking up the phone and you REALLY want a quickie in the shower.

Though, as it turned out, shower sex wasn’t as fun as the movies had led her to believe.

Still, her skills saved her money on basic home repairs, and there was a certain satisfaction in restoring and repairing worn out things.

After a fair amount of loud cracking from the old paint on the frame, Nicole managed to remove the wood strips and lift the lower window a little until it rested out of the tracks. Figuring that she may as well replace both cords while she had the window out anyway, Nicole cut the other cord, taking care to slowly lower the attached weight so that it wouldn’t smash into its cavity inside the frame.

With a small grunt, Nicole lifted the now free sash and carefully laid it onto the sawbucks. She’d learned the hard way not to put windows on the ground when doing work like this, as it seemed to be the fastest way to put one’s foot right through the glass. Fortunately, she’d only had to pay to replace one broken windowpane before she’d learned her lesson.

Turning back to the now-open frame, Nicole took the pointed end of her 5-in-1 tool and carefully traced it around the rectangular panels on each side of the inner frame before prying them off, revealing the weights inside of both sides.

“Should probably check these pullies and make sure they’re not gummed up.” Nicole muttered as she set the panels aside and pulled the weights out of their cavities.

As it turned out, the pullies were quite gummed up from decades of paint. It took a bit of scraping, and some lubricating oil for good measure, but eventually Nicole had the pully wheels rotating smoothly. That done, she untied the broken cords from the weights and removed the other half of the cords from the sash laying on the sawbucks. She grabbed the bag from the hardware store and pulled out the five or six different types of cord that she’d bought and compared them to the old cord from the window. Finding one with the same thickness, she unwrapped that package and turned back towards the window, taking a deep breath.

“Alright, time for the fun part.” Nicole grumbled as she measured out the appropriate length of cord for both sides and cut the pieces she needed, making sure to give herself a few extra inches. Grabbing some string from her belt, she tied the end around a small screw and threaded it through the pully wheel, the added weight helping to keep the string from snagging on the box inside of the frame. Once the screw was visible inside of the cavity, she wrapped the other end of the string around the cord and used the weighted end to pull it through the wheel and down into the cavity.

“Hell of a lot easier than trying to thread it through blind.” Nicole said with a bit of pride in her voice as she freed the weighted string and then ran that end of the cord through the hole at the top of the weight, tying it off and cutting the excess length off with her utility knife before setting the weight into the cavity. She did the same process with the other side of the window before replacing the panels in the sides, closing up the access panel to the weights.

“Okay, so far so good.” Nicole congratulated herself. “Now I just need to make sure not to break the window on this last bit…”

With a small grunt, she lifted the sash back into the window frame, carefully leaning the top out so that she could attach the sash cords to their respective sides of the window. One side at a time, she pulled the cords until they were the appropriate tightness, and carefully tacked them into the grooves on the sides of the sash with three small nails on each side. With a deep breath of anticipation, Nicole slowly raised and lowered the window, satisfied when the weights didn’t bang into the tops or bottoms of the frames. She tacked the vertical strips of wood back into the frame, taking care to make sure the beams didn’t obstruct the movement of the sash, and finally stepped back to admire her work.

“…I should paint this…” Nicole sighed as she took in the cracked and chipped paintwork that, quite frankly, looked like shit. Her eyes roamed around the room, taking in the other windows that would look pretty drab by comparison if she only painted one.

And if she was going to go to the trouble of painting them all…

“I might as well fix them all.” Nicole sighed as she made her way to the next window and tried to open it.

* * *

Waverly shoved the front door open and stumbled in from the darkened porch, dropping her bag and shucking off her boots, leaving them in an uncharacteristically messy pile by the door. Another Rev-Head in Hell, another successful day. But God, even the successful days were exhausting. Wynonna and Doc had decided to hit the bar (and probably each other after enough drinks), leaving Waverly with a much-needed night alone with her girlfriend.

“Baby, I know we said we’d go out tonight, but I’m so tired, and I just want a shower.” She called as she trudged up the stairs to find Nicole. “And some cuddles. And my favorite pajamas. And maybe a drink or two. Oh, did Wynonna drink all of the-“  
  
Waverly pushed her bedroom door open, and was greeted with the strong smell of oil pant and the sight of Nicole, a ventilated mask on her face and a well-worn toolbelt around her hips, paintbrush in one hand and half-empty can of paint in the other.

“Ummm…surprise?” Nicole’s brows crinkled together anxiously as she watched Waverly’s eyes scan the room, taking in the tarp covering the floor along with the paint chips and sawdust from the newly-sanded and painted windows.

“Baby, what’s all this?” Waverly asked, confused hazel eyes meeting nervous brown ones.

“You, uh…you said that Ward never fixed the windows.” Nicole fidgeted a bit, worried that she may have overstepped a bit. “I thought, you know, that I’d fix ‘em for you. So you can open ‘em and get some fresh air.”  
  
Waverly stepped over to the closest window and peered at it, careful not to touch the still-drying paint. The window looked almost like new, sanded and painted and the panes clean from what must have been rigorous scrubbing on Nicole’s part. Scanning the rest of the windows, she saw that every window in her bedroom had received the same treatment. And if Nicole said they all worked perfectly now, then Waverly had no reason to doubt her words.

This must have taken Nicole all day.

“I’m sorry, I probably should have asked if this was okay.” Nicole set the can down on the tarp and fidgeted with the brush. “I just thought I’d save you the trouble of having to hold the windows up with sticks and hurting your thumb, and once I did one, I wanted to paint it, and that meant I needed to paint all of them or else it’d look weird, and once I knew that I had to paint all of ‘em, I just thought it made sense to fix all of ‘em and-MMPF!”

Nicole’s rambling was cut off by the smaller woman’s valiant attempt to climb her like a redwood and fuse their lips together permanently. Waverly’s fingers slipped into her hair and gently tugged, pulling a moan from Nicole’s mouth and her eyes to slip closed. Waverly pulled away, looking up at Nicole with a smile that caused the corners of her eyes to crinkle.

Nicole gave her a dazed smile in return…before she felt something pressed against her chest.

“…I think you’re smushing the paintbrush into our shirts, Waves.”

* * *

It had taken a couple of months of Nicole’s days off and more than one injured finger, but eventually she’d fixed and painted every window on the Homestead.

It had been worth it for every moment that she got to see Waverly curled up by one of the open windows, a peaceful look on her face as she read her books and listened to the birds chirping outside.


End file.
